A letter to my franglo-ontarian friends

To my English-speaking French friends,

Your names are Paquette, Lafleur, Lalonde, Belanger, Tremblay, Gauthier, Veilleux, Lemieux, Giroux. It might be hard to pronounce, or you might just pronounce it in English. Some of you may have two francophone parents, some of you only one, and some of you have never heard your parents utter a single word of French, despite their names being something like Jean-Pierre or Jacqueline.

You may or may not know me, but you certainly know someone like me, probably with an accent aigu in their names, who actually spoke French in high school, brought French movies to watch in primary school, and likely tried to recruit you to go to some activity/concert/whatever in French, very often at the risk of social ridicule.

Some of you may have cousins like me, whom you make an extra effort to speak French to at Christmas. You may have had a childhood friend like me, who learned English from watching Power Rangers with you. You may even have dated people like me, only to feel awkward when meeting your in-laws and being forced to admit you can’t speak French very well.

I’m writing to you today as a well adjusted young man, an active member of the francophone community in Ontario. Since finishing high school, I’ve been involved with a variety of francophone organisations in the Sudbury area, and I’ve been trying, through various means, to find a way to make speaking French more normal for francophones in Ontario.

I spent 3 and a half years studying in Montreal, where – despite what alarmist politicians and die-hard hockey fans would have you believe – bilingualism is a normal, accepted, (controversial, still) every-day thing. I returned to Northern Ontario about two months ago, and got right back into my francophone involvement. I participated in the launch of this site, and my job as a college recruiter allowed me to travel throughout the North, speaking with francophone students about pursuing their education in French.

I say all of this because I want to ask you a question.

It’s a question that has been bothering me since I was little, since I understood that speaking French in the schoolyard was not the best way to make friends. I’ve wanted to ask you this question every time I hear things like “I’m French but I hate speaking it” or “French music sucks”. I’ve wanted to ask you even more since I found out that some anglophones in Montreal have more respect for the French language than many “francophones” from my hometown.

My question is this: do you even care? Do you even want to keep speaking French? Do you want people to fight for the right to have francophone nurses and doctors? Do you want people to keep taking significant financial risks by bringing francophone artists over here? Do you want us to complain about the signage in a Caisse Populaire being in English?

Of course, faced with these kinds of questions, many of you will say that you understand the importance of the French language, that you wish you spoke it more, and that you will send your children to French school, so they won’t lose the French and so they can speak to their grandparents.

So what’s the problem?

I want to know if you care that French schools are filled with kids who don’t really care about French. I want to know if you actually watch French TV, or press 2 for French service. I want to know if, when you go to Montreal for Spring Break or Osheaga or UFC, you speak French to your servers at the restaurant. Quite honestly, I didn’t always use French during my years in Montreal, nor do I today in Sudbury. But I do speak it regularly, in multiple contexts, and most importantly, I can appreciate the influence bilingualism has had on my identity.

I want to know if it is worth it for me and my like-minded friends to keep defending the place of French in this province, and in this country. I want to know if you’re behind us, or if you simply don’t care and are happy to get by in English without having to use French. An honest answer would, at the very least, be a weight off my back.

As francophone Ontarians, we have a double burden. Not only do we have to justify our use of the French language to our Ontarian landlords, but we have to justify our outlying presence to our Quebecker cousins, who quite often can’t take us seriously, despite being genuinely surprised and happy when they actually do meet someone from Ontario who speaks decent French. We are straddling Canada’s traditional two solitudes, and if anyone can help anglophones and francophones understand each other, it is us.

Let me be clear: I’m not blaming anyone. French is hard as fuck to learn when you have no reason to do so. Even the upper echelons of francophone decision-makers are at a loss for meaning, for purpose, and for solutions to our accelerating assimilation rates. I just want to know what you, my English-speaking Franco-Ontarian friends, think of this mess of an officially bilingual country we ended up in. I want to know if it’s still worth fighting for.

I have always had some difficulty speaking consistently fluent french (I didn’t learn french until I started grade school), but being out of (french) high school for a few years now, I have seen a drastic decline in my ability to speak/write in the language. This is not a personal choice, but something that I am having a very difficult time preventing.
The main problem is that the less I use it, the worse my french-speaking ability gets; and the worse my french gets, the less chance I have to use it. For example, if I go up to somebody bilingual and start speaking to them in french, they end up taking « pity » on me and say something like, « You can just speak in english if it’s easier », at which point I am embarrassed enough of my terrible french that I just take the easy way out and switch to english.Long story short, it’s really not that I don’t care about speaking french at all; on the contrary, I’d like to improve and re-immerse myself into the francophone community. I just find that it’s becoming more and more difficult (and somewhat overwhelming) for me to use my french on a regular basis.

(p.s. I’m sorry for not leaving this comment in french, but I don’t think I would have been able to clearly communicate my true thoughts on the subject at this point)

My issue with french music has never been a language thing (I listen to music in German, Korean, Japanese, Czech, Russian, etc) but a music thing. There are no famous french DJs (Adventure Club from MTL are english iirc, let’s not talk about David Guetta) that sample french music. There’s a lack of quality in french metal, IMO. Also french music seems to be heavily influenced by folk (understandably), not my taste in music.

I don’t really get to use french outside of my family gatherings. I don’t have the skill to use it in everyday adventures and I don’t have the option of going to school in french. I try and listen to the news in french now and again,

All this being said, you know what the problem with « francophones » is? At least when I was in high school the prevailing cultural attitude was the biggest pity party, « woe is me », everyone hates me thing in the world. It’s like francophony was an emo kid. It was distasteful and disheartening. I know that it turned me away from the culture and I don’t think I’m the only one. Exposing someone to that kind of thing doesn’t breed a positive outlook, it makes then not take the issue seriously or puts them off.

This cultural « emo-ness » goes beyond just affecting the younger generations of fracophones though. It bleeds through to the english people, and unsurprisingly, it puts them off too. How many times have you been brushed off by english people? The french culture (at the time I was in high school and stuff… so about 5 years ago) wasn’t really helping the french people win anyone over. I haven’t really heard about anything that’s changed ether.

Check out TEPR, Stromae (not Alors on danse, Kanye already proved that that song sucks), We Are Terrorists, Beataucue, Yelle, Qualité Motel… some of these aren’t DJs but rather Electro acts, but you get the picture.

I was and always will be that kid in a french school who is indifferent to the language. I grew up in Missisauga attending french catholic school not by choice, but by obligation.

My mother who was born and raised in Sudbury pushed me there. Her main argument was not because we are Francophone (far from it, my father is Scottish), it was because it is an advantage in the workforce. So for 18 years of my life I attended schools three times farther than english ones, and did twice the linguistic work not by choice, but by obligation. I never practiced the language at home or around me.

I find the francophone community is quick to say « Be proud of the fact you speak french and rejoice your french culture! » Yet when I spoke the language, I would often be cut off by an even more broken english than my french saying « You can speak to me in english. » You speak of assimilation, yet you segregate and brand us english when we try to be french. « Ostie d’tête carrée. On vas les avoir les anglais. » Can’t say you’re a friendly community to foreigners .

Once I graduated high school I was free to pick whatever language I pleased, and I chose french. Not due to the fact that it grew on me, I chose it because a french diploma looks better on a resume than a english one. So off I went to Collège Boréal for it’s natural ressource program. Sure I am fluent in french, I know what la ptite vie, une temps d’une paix and Infoman is, I can sing along to bands like les Colocs and les Coyboys Fringantes and bake a mean sugar pie and tourtière. But watching anime, reading manga, eating sushi and knowing what a good cup of Bubble tea is doesn’t make me Japanese. I may be knowledgeable in french culture, but that doesn’t make me francophone. Don’t expect individuals like I to be painting ourselves white and green singing Notre Place every 25th of September. I am a Ontarian who happens to speak french in order to have that extra feather in the hat.

NiLaforge

If that is all being french means to you than that is sad. You may speak french but you are certainly not francophone. There is more to our culture than baking pies.

But that’s exactly what she is saying. She never claimed to be french. » I am a Ontarian who happens to speak french… » and as far as what she says about being quick to discourage some one who doesn’t speak the kind of french that we like, to switch to english and make some one who is trying to talk french feel like shit.

Re: I would often be cut off…
Out of context, this comment can paint francophones in a bad light. I work in french and if a bilingual client is struggling in french I have absolutely no problem insisting we speak in english instead. No room to have anything lost in translation during a busy work day. There’s that advantage in the workforce you where speaking of. At the end of the day I might feel a little remorse for insisting on the switch but if that decision helped ensure my employement that much more than so be it.

Things change outside of work. And if your exemple happened during, let’s say a social gathering than I’m sorry to hear that. All I can say is that there are as many french douchebags as english ones!

Re: I chose french. Not due to the fact that it grew on me, I chose it
because a french diploma looks better on a resume than a english one

That’s never a good idea. Like choosing to be a doctor instead of something you would actually enjoy doing based solely on the fact that it pays more. You’ll just be a mediocre doctor in the end. That’s my main problem with Boreal. I taught there for 1 year and flunked students because there was enough of a language barrier to prevent them from properly understanding the course material! How can you knowingly accept someone’s money knowing they’ll flunk due to a language barrier?!

Don’t be too hard on us francophones. You might think we’re unfriendly but we’re pretty patient for a community almost forced to function with a second language on a daily bassis. Maybe we repress a little too much of that anger…

Re: I would often be cut off…
This does happen very often. I consider myself to be pretty good for speaking french and chose to speak it probably 75% of the time. How ever I admit my vocabulary is fairly simple. I do not listen to a lot of Radio Canada and my parents are a mixed bag when it comes to french and i have a good case of franglais going on. I have been asked if it would just be easier for me to speak English simply because i happen to not know the correct term for a specific word that isn’t in my every day vocab (ex: banking stuff, or insurance stuff) In that case i usually either ask for the right term, or just say it in English and carry on my conversation in French. I agree that in a work place setting its important to make sure the correct information is being understood, but that could simply be done by verifying. It doesn’t mean that you need to totally change the language. I think this is one of the main reasons why francophones often simply chose to press 1 for service in English. Again, they are too embarrassed to try to use there language because they are not used to using it. So those who are privileged to use it more often than others and have a wider vocabulary and a « nicer » accent tend to belittle those who may not have the chance to talk french as often. This in the end, will make this wonderful language extinct. I had left Sudbury for 4 months and worked in a place that unfortunately had zero french around. When i came back to sudbury, I found it hard for almost 1 month to get back in the « habit » of speaking french and I had forgotten many words. It takes dedication for some one to practice a language. It is even harder when they are constantly reminded that they suck at it. I now live in Quebec and have been for almost 3 years. I experienced the same thing again, only this time even worse because even my french wasn’t good enough since it was « Ontario » french and not « Quebec » french. For such a minority national community we really do segregate ourselves in even smaller minorities and snob those who aren’t as good as we think we are.

Don’t get me wrong, I know not every one is like this, but i think many are ignorant to the degree this is happening.

My father is French, my mother is English. We were raised in Elliot Lake and Capreol. Our house was pretty much English, even though my father was raised french. He has said one of his biggest regrets is not teaching us, but it just never happened. French immersion wasn’t an option based on when I started school, so I only had the french class. They taught the science of french (verb conjugation, masculine, feminine etc), rather than teaching how to carry on a conversation. I found it immensely difficult to learn. That left my dads side of the family, who tried to teach me the culture by forcing the things they liked about it on me. As a 17 year old Nine Inch Nails fan in 1996, Celine Dion and Roch Voisine were not in any way interesting to me, but they were the only things presented to me. Now that I’m an adult living in London, I regret not knowing french. I discovered a band called Les Dales Hawerchuck a few years back and was floored that I had no idea good punk rock could exist in french. I am involved in the folk scene as well and have a whole new respect for francophone music. It is a part of my identity, even though it is something I cant completely identify with. That’s the hardest part, knowing I come from somewhere that I don’t understand. If I had to think of a way to improve things for others, I would suggest that those in positions to teach younger generations of english speakers how to understand and discover the whole spectrum of francophone culture. I feel I was only presented with a tiny sliver of it, and told this is what it means to be french, to me, so it is what it will mean for you. It wasn’t the whole picture, it left out everything I could identify with.

Thank you so much for sharing your story. Things like this need to be heard, we need to realize how fast and why we’re collectively losing not only our language, but all of the culture that goes with it.

Jashn

Speaking as an English Canadian who learnt French as a second language, I have to say I agree with this description of the learning process whole-heartedly.

Part of the problem is weirdly related to copyright law. Until recently, it was illegal to show movies in schools without paying the licensing fee for doing so, even if the movie was educational. So teachers of French as a second language or in an immersion context just couldn’t show the fun aspect of francophone culture because the schools didn’t have the funds necessary to pay for licensing fees when playing movies or music in class. Personally, I think if more emphasis is placed on this aspect of things, people will generally be more interested, and also will learn more easily since they’ll have some sort of out-of-classroom reinforcement that is pleasurable and not mechanical memorization of verb conjugations. Anyway, just a thought…

Oui! Mais est ce que ce dois toujours être une battaille? I care about the French language …. I speak it,I sing it and I embrace my bilingualism regarldless of what anyone else thinks …. Perhaps I do not speak it as well as I should or write that well in French …. but it is still part of who I am …..

That being said ….. Without it being a fight I will make sure my child knows both languages and that I continue to speak it as much as I can ….. Je vais lui communiquer l’importance du français dans ma vie avec l’espérance que cela devienne important pour elle et peut être un jour pour ses enfants …..

The French language is a part of who we are! How could we possibly just let a portion of our history and culture just go down the toilet? Keeping a bilingual country is extremely important. I was born in a francophone town in northern Ontario and moved to B.C. when I was 5. I was teased, taunted and ridiculed for being « the French kid, » so I stopped speaking it except when I was at home. During the 15 years I was there, I never learned to write or speak the ‘non-slang’ French. Now as an adult living back in Ontario, communication in French is an asset. I can finally practice speaking it again and I’m even going to take a course to improve my « orthographe! » My point is, French is a part of me, my family, my history and my culture and on the 15th of August every year we celebrate our heritage as Acadians. I don’t want to lose part of who I am just because some people don’t give a damn.

Je suis fière.Merci

JessDominique

Oui! Mais est ce que ce dois toujours être une battaille? I care about the French language …. I speak it,I sing it and I embrace my bilingualism regarldless of what anyone else thinks …. Perhaps I do not speak it as well as I should or write that well in French …. but it is still part of who I am …..

That being said ….. Without it being a fight I will make sure my child knows both languages and that I continue to speak French
as much as I can ….. Je vais lui communiquer l’importance du français dans ma vie avec l’espérance que cela devienne important pour elle et peut être un jour pour ses enfants …..

My parents both came from French families although we always spoke English at home. I went to a French school in Sudbury all the way through high school. (I actually saw someone from my school comment on this thread!) Now I live in London, Ontario and I find that there is next to no French here at all. Many people here are from elsewhere in Southern Ontario and the majority don’t speak it. Living down here has given me perspective. Even living in Sudbury, the majority of the media we’re exposed to is English, the majority of the people speak English. As kids, we don’t want to be left out and when all things popular that people are talking about are from the US media and all TV shows that everyone watches are in English and everyone in town speaks English as a norm… then we won’t be very motivated to go out of our way to speak French. Not helping the matter, one of my principal memories from high school is teachers constantly saying « Parlez français! Parlez français! » and seemingly nagging us all the time, and this left a sour taste in my mouth. When all outside influences appear to be English and we get nagged in school, you can see why as teenagers we probably wouldn’t be terribly enthusiastic about speaking it all day all the time. That said, I am proud that I speak French as well as I do and I use it when I can, but you won’t see me going around waving the green and white flag everywhere.

Perhaps it’s sad, but majority rules. When the majority of a population speaks English, that is most likely the norm. If someone speaks French to me, I am more than happy to speak it. If I’m in Quebec or France, then great, I’ll speak it.

On the point of channel 2 and tuning into other French services… in Ontario, the pickings are slim. I often tune into them only to find that the actual content is not entertaining. I tune into French CBC radio on the way to Sudbury to find people talking about the most random things such as fish in South America or malls in China. It seems as though it’s not enough to speak French but I also have to have these niche interests to find any French programming that I will actually enjoy. Why would I pay attention to these when I have popular English music and much better English TV series available to me? (Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Big Bang Theory, etc.)

Ca m’a toujours paru comme des balivernes de paresse. L’un parce qu’il préfère se soumettre à l’assimilation que de s’afficher culturellement. The other because he can’t live as a Francophone in an Anglophone world. Two very different mind sets, two very similar motivations. Maybe I was simply lucky to be born where I was born, and lived sheltered from an Anglophone reality, and yet…

My story is pretty similar to many « franglo-Ontarians ». I grew up in a town in south-western Ontario where French was rampant 50+ years ago, but has disappeared considerably since then. Everyone has a Mémé and a Pépé, a French last name, all the streets are French, and all the names of the towns in the area were originally French (Belle Rivière became Belle River, Pointe-aux-roches became Stoney Point, etc.). I went to French Catholic schools, and even did my Bachelor’s degree in French at Ottawa U, though we spoke English in the home, and my friends were all either Anglophones or in the same situation as I was so it just was natural to converse in English.
All my life I considered myself bilingual (not Francophone). My education was 100% French, and I did really well. However, oral expression isn’t really as valued as essays and grammar in schools, unfortunately.
So sure, I could write a mean essay, but when I moved to Ottawa for university, and for the first time in my life, found myself trying to hold a conversation with actual Francophones, I was embarrassed. Slowly, I started practising, and picking new slang up, and really starting to blend in at this bilingual university in this bilingual city (even my accent had changed a little, though people will still ask « t’as un drôle d’accent… tu viens d’ou? »). I started to really give this thing some thought, and decided I would change my major to Second Language Teaching for French. I was really annoyed that I had gone to school my whole life in French, had Francophone teachers, and yet felt uncomfortable speaking to other franco-Ontarians. I wanted to teach French the right way, and have kids feel confident and able to have conversations in French. I did struggle, though, throughout my university career, being discouraged by Francophone professors and students who said that non-Francophones teaching the language (people like me) « détruisent la langue », and wondering if what I wanted to do was even possible considering the reality of the circumstances. It’s not « cool » to speak French when you happen to be a bilingual kid, so nobody ends up practising it, which is something that many people only come to regret later in life. Not only that though. More and more, there are no actual Francophones in our small towns (at least in southern Ontario) to practise WITH, and to have cultural and linguistic models. I had begun to wonder if people like me really could be the models, or if we were a new prototype for our province’s unique dynamic, or if those fellow students and profs were right, and I shouldn’t bother. I still can’t make up my mind, and have contradicting thoughts on the whole situation. Sometimes I think « OK I’ll leave it up to the Francophones to pass down their own language as best they can, my efforts aren’t even appreciated by that community anyway ». Other times I think people like me can do it, and though things won’t be completely the same and some cultural elements will be lost, it’s better than having the language completely die out.
So… after this long rant, to answer your question… some people honestly don’t care, but some of us do. Though people like me won’t always be fighting by your side, we will benefit from everything that you do. You are one of the few people left in this province who can still call themselves « Francophone », and you are the only ones who can share and pass down all the cultural and linguistic knowledge. You are needed.

Despite what this article might suggest, I find myself haunted by these contradicting thoughts as well. And I’m hoping that by opening up the dialogue we may be able to, collectively, find some of the answers to those conundrums, or at least agree on a direction to take. Thank you for reading, and thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Your situation is again confirming that we are killing our own. You choose to keep going with your french roots but because its not « as good » as other`s, you are being discouraged to do so. Not every one is strong like you to keep going any ways. I think you are an excellent model. Who better else to spread the love of a culture than some one who actually does love it? You said it yourself. You can write a mean essay. Who cares about your accent (well no one should care in any way). Just like you said the more you speak it the better you get at it. Expressions are regional any ways so if you don’t have all the « right » slang, who are they to tell you so. I am from Sudbury and chose to live in french midway through highschool. I now live in Rouyn-Noranda in Québec for the past 3 years and let me tell you i had to re-learn the way people speak here. My Azilda slang just wasn’t cutting it over here. So tonight i was at a supper with people from Abitibi, one from Sagenai and one from France who has only been in Canada less than 2 years. We all spoke french but very different french. Who is to say the other one is bad? in our own region we speak just fine.
I might be getting off subject a bit but all i want to say is that i admire you for wanting to share your appreciation for your language and wish there were more like you who are not afraid to push through. Please keep it up.

French-speaking towns directly in contact with English are quickly assimiated to English, then the same thing happens to the next town, then the next…

It’s happening pretty much everywhere. For example Miscouche in P-E-I.http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscouche
It used to be a French-speaking town but now only the elderly still speak French, and the Acadian area shrunk so much the language will soon cease to function as a community language.

Thanks for the article. These so-called Franglo-Ontarians are numerous
but completely unspoken of in the medias. The picture painted is either
black or white… Really bilingualism in Ontario is a spectrum of all
shades of grey! Why want a society where people require to choose one side? How destructive it is when people are ask to take a radical stand? — you get hatred filled newspapers like those in Cornwall recently… Now the results are counter-productive to ALL Ontarians.

I command you for bringing light to the contribution of
Franglo-Ontarians to the life, the culture in Ontario. I don’t think you condemn but bring a new player in the thinking process for the development of Ontario. It’s not because one ask a question that we need a clear answer. Most the time what is most beneficial is to bring awareness on the real state of things to provide a ground for constructive solutions.

And yes I did use Google translate to write this comment in a decent English & a decent French. Why limit myself to just one language?

This was precisely the point of my article. For everything that is said about francophones in Ontario, English-speaking Franco-ontarians are absent from the public discourse.

The letter was intended to be provocative, but like you said, I am condemning nothing but the black and white vision which is presented in the media. Anglophone Canadians of francophone/québecois/acadian ancestry are a very important part of Canadian society; just look at all the anglophone hockey players with french names; René Bourque, Patrick Marleau, Logan Couture, Tyler Seguin (note the absence of « é »). Not to mention the francophone/franglophone players who despite their english names are either francophones or were raised in french/went to french school: Alex Burrows (quebecois), Jonathan Toews, (Québécois Mother), Manny Malholtra (his french-canadian mother and pakistani father both pursued doctorates at Laval University), and Cal Clutterbuck, a franco-ontarian from the Welland area.

The phenomenon is not restricted to hockey; Ruth Ellen Brosseau, the controversial NDP candidate/now MP in the Mauricie area of Quebec (who was infamously on vacation during the Quebec election) was railed on during the entire campaign because she didn’t speak much french. Upon meeting with her constituents, many were surprised and happy to related that she actually did speak a very passable and suitable french. She grew up in the french immersion system in Kingston, ON, and her name is Brosseau. Doesn’t that make her franco-ontarian, or at the very least, franglo-ontarian?

I dream of an Ontario (and a Canada) where « taking sides » is a practical impossibility. Where decisions regarding the future of the French language and culture in the province and country take into account not just the vocal francophones with the means to be heard, but also those franco-ontarians which, despite choosing/being forced by circumstance to live mostly in English, have the same constitutional rights as francophones.

Thank you for your comment, and thank you for the bilingual effort (although I would never recommend google translation to anyone!)

I am an anglo-ontarian who hated taking french throughout elementary and highschool. now attending university an having made many quebecois friends i am filled with regret at those decisions to quit. i am taking classes and trying my best to catch up so that i may share that wondrous feeling of experiencing two unique cultures and gaining a greater understanding of the francophone identity

FakeName1

My father is a retired Quebecois soldier, my mother is Dutch. Their common language was English, and it was passed on as the language of the house to me and my brothers, the first anglophones in our entire extended family. I used to speak fluent Dutch when I was 4-5, but then I moved away from Holland back to Quebec, and lost it. I was doing very well in French class in Quebec, but the necessities of being in a military family meant that I had to move every 3-4 years, often to non-francophone countries. Thus, I was subject to many different school systems in many different countries with varying degrees of priorities in teaching the French language; I can honestly say I’ve taken beginner’s French at least 4-5 times. Then, I moved back to Quebec for a final time, where I was thrust into secondary French where everything was assumed to be revision, and I did so poorly (especially compared to my other classes, where I was otherwise a good student) that I became so frustrated and discouraged that I simply gave up.

Time passed, I went to another school for my last two years of high school, and I learned Italian, which, to my surprise, I picked up very quickly and excelled at. When I moved to Ontario for university and studied French again, I was shocked at how quickly I took it up now that I had another Romantic language to compare it to. Oddly enough, after leaving Quebec, my French improved noticeably. I can now finally talk to my relatives at Christmas dinner, as opposed to the many years previous where I would simply eat my meal and wait in polite silence until I could leave because the language at the table was one I could not understand. I even recently found the blog http://offqc.com which helped me learn the French that I want to learn, the French I’ll actually use with my family or when I travel to Quebec.

I apologize for being so long winded, but now I will come to my point. My French improved dramatically while I was at school but now that I’ve graduated and moved away again, I have no opportunity or reason to use it outside of family functions and the occasional business trip to Quebec (which, I will say, I do my best to speak French to my colleagues and servers unless I am at an absolute loss or if I catch on that they would like to practice English). It is a part of my identity, and an important part, but I have always felt like an outsider in Quebec just like I feel like an outsider in the Netherlands, regardless of my heritage. I simply can’t communicate well enough, and I never will, regardless of how much French TV I watch or community groups I join. When I open my mouth, people don’t know or care about my history–I’m just another Anglo from Toronto butchering their language. How could I ever embrace my identity if my identity will never embrace me?

« How could I ever embrace my identity if my identity will never embrace me? » Good question.

little britney

I still want to speak French…But i find it really difficult to do so in Sudbury for all the above reasons you just answered! I was one of those Francophones who has a French last name, who was in all french and then switched to immersion, who went away to live in a more bilingual environment…and now, i have been back in Sudbury for 4 years now, and can barely speak french at all anymore! I have completely lost the ability to write it too. I still want to speak it..but this city isn’t all that accepting of it. Thats why i am moving to Ottawa! To raise my children in a more bilingual environment because i don’t want them to go through what i am going through…Oh and when i go to other bilingial cities, i am more willing to speak french there than here at home…its weird!

We have similar situations! I have anglophone mother and francophone father (although he has a very hard time in French now), learnt English as a first language then learnt French at school in martarnelle. I did all my studies in a French public school, however once I got to high school my French started suffering. I never practiced it, other than with my teachers and occasional family members. At home it has always been English, and now it was the ‘cool’ thing to speak English at school too. When I moved to Montreal in 2013 for school, that’s when I REALLY realized that I was embarrassed to even say I was bilingual. It hit me that I took for granted my bilingualism and that it’s something that needs to be nurtured. I believe that in Sudbury we love to throw around the fact that we speak both languages, when in reality most of us don’t even make the effort to practice our French (I am very guilty of it). After two years in Montreal, I can say that I am very confident in both languages, and I love being completely bilingual. It’s really something special, and I’m glad I found it out at 18 years old and not when it was ‘too late’. French isn’t easy to learn by any means, but I find it a beautiful language. It’s worth fighting for!